


take the burning sun

by ashkatom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 15:25:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t let him stay, exactly. You don’t encourage him to leave, either, although you think he still might. Instead, he prods at you like this, testing your boundaries and seeing how far he can go before you threaten him. You wonder what he would do, if he knew that you killed his Ancestor, if he knew his Ancestor was infamous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take the burning sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [temporalDecay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/gifts).
  * Inspired by [on the wrong side, looking at the right side](https://archiveofourown.org/works/951146) by [temporalDecay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay). 



> Written for Fi, because the best birthday present is rarepairs. Written as a prequel of sorts to _on the wrong side, looking at the right side_ , although probably not fully compatible because my brain is not capable of holding all the worldbuilding Fi throws at me.

If there is one thing you despise, it is wilful ignorance. It is appropriate to your life and its insistence on not allowing you reprieve from your failures that you are required to make contact with it on the regular, for food and the supplies you use to build things to keep your mind occupied in the early hours of the morning. Your needs are few, but they are needs nonetheless.

Given your status with the Empire, the only trolls willing to trade with you are those that follow the passed-down and twisted teachings of the Signless Sufferer, and every time you meet with them you feel yourself pulling a little further away from the world. You knew their saviour; you were instrumental to his downfall and they regard you as holy for it. It is unutterably _wrong_. You still remember the blood he spat, though not the words he cursed, and now his followers lessen even the cruel planning of his fate by saying that you were a puppet.

Their representative tonight is one of their worst, a thin tealblood whose horns are barely level with your collarbones. She has a way of smiling at you gently and condescending to you when talking of her faith, and it irks you all the more when she is the only contact you will have with another troll for a season. Today, she remains silent as she unloads her sylladex, but the usual smile curls up the corners of her mouth and sets you on edge.

No matter who they send, the same question is always asked: “Have you reconsidered joining us?” She asks it as you are packing ore into your modus, and you are able to use your need for concentration as an excuse to merely shake your head. After a long silence, she says, “He’s been reborn, you know.”

Your hands still for the merest of moments. As you begin to sort your supplies again, you say, as flatly as you can, “Impossible.” And it is. His genes would never have cleared the layers of filtering necessary for a descendant, let alone in quantities great enough to bring his mutation to dominance in so few generations.

The tealblood - you have never asked her name, and she has never offered - kneels down and begins handing you coils of wire. “There have been sightings,” she says, and all of a sudden the curve of her lips seems amused, rather than condescending. “Not rumours,” she adds, before you can offer any protest. “Some of our own have seen him.”

You politely decline to point out that some of her own are stark raving mad, instead offering a non-committal, “Ah.”

“You doubt,” she says, and hands you another coil. “Do you really think he would have left his work undone, after carrying it through his dying breath?”

You pack the last of your supplies away and stand. The tealblood rises after you in a fluid motion and brushes her skirt flat again, and waits for her answer. Something compels you to be cruelly honest, as you reshoulder your quaver and pick up your bow. “If you desire the return of past events, do you wish for me to kill him again?”

You turn and walk away without waiting for an answer.

\--

Countless runaways have found their way to your hive, over the sweeps. The same conditions that make it a useful home for you also appeal to others, and there is a certain combination of cleverness, durability, and desperation that herds these young trolls towards your remote, hidden location. They inevitably have run out of endurance by the time they arrive, and the sight of an adult tends to break them. They run, with reserves dredged up from nowhere, or they collapse. On one occasion, a jadeblood hit you with a stick and was surprised when it broke.

Sometimes, if the mere sight of you doesn’t scare them off, you let them stay for a short while; feed them, let them rest, and set them back on their path. Others, those who have good reason to run, you direct to the Church, as they like to call themselves. Your words are not so kind, but it is as safe a place as any, and not alone.

In any case, you are used to finding trolls on the edge of maturity prowling through your home, attempting to create a pocket of safety for themselves. The one you find no more than a week after your seasonal trade trip is no surprise; he must have followed the faint paths laid out by the Church and then made his own way here.

You sling your bow back over your shoulder; no runaway has yet managed to injure you, and the less threatening you appear, the more likely he is to actually listen. He’s clearly a mutant, and had to escape in a hurry from whatever situation outed him; his clothes are torn - by hands, you think, not blades - his pants covered in dirt, his feet bare and callused. You think there is a bruise on his neck, although the distance makes it difficult to tell. He walks with a shuffle that belies how far he has walked, placing one foot in front of the other as if he will die if he stops. It is likely true, for him.

You move forward and wait for him to notice you. When he does, he doesn’t collapse, or shriek, or run. He just caves in all at once, his shoulders slumping in defeat. With care, as if he has forgotten how to do anything other than walk with his legs, he lowers himself to the floor and sits heavily, then holds up his hands in defeat, having come this far and unable to go any further.

An unhealed wound on the palm of one hand shines red, even in the dark of your hive.

Before you quite know what has happened, your legs give out from under you in a mocking echo of his and you thud to the ground in the least dignified manner possible. This responsibility is not yours. This responsibility _cannot_ be yours, not after all this time. He doesn’t even look up, over-weary and dead on his feet, and your terrified thoughts settle into one: You cannot let the cultists have him. They would pamper him and win his trust and use him to start a war, and you saw what happened the last time.

His arms sag, then drop, startling you back to the situation at hand and not its spiralling possibilities, and you realise that he has exhausted himself into dead unconsciousness. Finally, for lack of any other course of action, you pick him up and carry him to your recuperacoon.

You almost miss the nights of clear-cut orders.

\--

It would simplify matters greatly if the Sufferer’s descendant - you don’t even know his _name_ \- were gone by the time you wake up over your workbench, daymares of murder and hesitation lingering on your tongue, but he would not be the Sufferer’s descendant if he were not audacious. You find him in the kitchen instead, methodically chewing his way through the extra supplies you always get at a pace that suggests there will not be extra for long.

You managed to wipe the worst of the dirt from him before you put him in your recuperacoon, not wanting to over-tax the filters. His clothes were a different matter, but you managed to get the truly egregious stains out and stitch together the shirt, resolutely doing your best to ignore the symbol. From the way the shirt sticks to his shoulders, it’s still damp, but you doubt he would have taken kindly to an offer of your clothes. At least his cut isn’t likely to pick up an infection, and you cleaned and bandaged it to make sure.

You still don’t know why you put in the effort. It was wooden, and unthinking, but you did it nonetheless.

He looks up when you enter, his arms going stiff around his plate as if you’ll snatch it away from him. You wait, patiently, and he relaxes by degrees, having decided that you aren’t going to murder him over breakfast.

“I made more,” he says, talking to his plate instead of you. You wonder if he’s ever seen a fully-grown adult before, if his cautious respect is based on rumours and fear. His eyes dart up - still filling in with crimson, mistakable in shadow - and he jerks his thumb at the stove, where a pan sits. Belatedly, he adds, “Thanks. For the bandage.”

You silently fetch a plate, load it with bacon and eggs, and sit across from the Sufferer’s descendant. The whole notion is so absurd that it makes you want to snap something in half, but instead you eat the food he has prepared for you and try to not think further ahead than you have to.

He’s a better cook than you are. You wonder if this should surprise you.

When he gets up to rinse his plate, you finally speak to him. “May I know your name?”

His shoulders stiffen, but he manages to force out, “Karkat.”

Knowing his name doesn’t help in the least.

\--

Karkat walks through your life like a ghost.

Everything about him is a shoutpole. His mutation, his attitude both exclaim to the world that this is someone to pay attention to, and you cannot help but take heed, but for all that, he slides through spaces in your perception that you were not aware existed. It is more painful than you ever could have dreamed.

He walks silently and stands still, in stark contrast to the rest of him, and whenever you enter a room you have to look at it twice to ensure that you know whether or not he’s there, to allow his profile - small, unruly hair, angry expression and aggressive stance learned over sweeps of necessity - to choke you and call up old nightmares.

Not culling him is a payment for an old, old debt and your final farewell to the standards of an Empire you cannot comply with in good conscience anymore. You treat it as such, because you cannot admit that it would be impossible. When you feel a string pulled to tension under your fingers, so real that you can almost smell the flames, you throw open your armoury and methodically snap your bows in half, slice their strings to pieces, and close the door again. Karkat will find the room eventually. He may even understand why, for all that you do not; he is as perceptive as his ancestor and twice as loud about it. It doesn’t matter.

Your control is slipping by increments. Karkat walks through your life like a ghost and you are haunted by his Ancestor and the cascade of all your related failures, and to your own horror you are growing used to the reminder of your mistakes cropping up in the unlikeliest of places.

The first time he jolts you into thinking of him as his own person, you walk into the kitchen he has long since taken over to find him actively waiting for you; not a ghost, but a consequence. The pieces of your bows are neatly lined up on the table, the strings placed in their curves, and shame wells up inside you at the accusatory, expecting look in his eyes. A ghost can haunt you and trap you in webs of your own guilt, but it cannot demand accountability, and Karkat is vicious for it.

“I-” you say, and stop, because excuses are not responsibility.

“You,” Karkat agrees, almost pleasantly, swinging his feet onto the table. You think he pushes your buttons in an attempt to wrest back what little control he can from his life, and you allow it as the least he deserves, after everything you have done to him. “I guess this is a moronic vortex of highblood shitfuckery, since all of the lowbloods _I_ know have realistic views of their defensive situations and don’t destroy their weapons in a fit of inadequacy, but maybe it’s a secret strategy you have for dealing with intruders by making them _laugh themselves to death_.” He raises his eyebrows at you in expectation of an answer, and you slowly ease yourself into the seat across from him.

You don’t let him stay, exactly. You don’t encourage him to leave, either, although you think he still might. Instead, he prods at you like this, testing your boundaries and seeing how far he can go before you threaten him. You wonder what he would do, if he knew that you killed his Ancestor, if he knew his Ancestor was infamous.

You lay your hands flat on the table and say, “I was never very good with the bow,” and a secret corner of your heart tucks Karkat’s rare expression of surprise away. Sometime in the past span of weeks you have shifted from protecting the world from Karkat to protecting Karkat from the world, and it doesn’t alarm you as much as it should.

\--

It’s not unusual for you to not see much of Karkat. He spends most of his time exploring the ruins, while you spend your time in the workshop, repairing what you can to make the ruins more liveable and working on anything else when you run out of things to repair so that you don’t have to think too hard. He’s even gone hunting twice and come back with neatly-butchered, unidentifiable meat that fills the entire refrigerator, while you spent the entire time crafting a new bow and hoping desperately that the Church would not find him, for all that he knows how to move unseen, or that he would simply leave and force you to bring him back.

It is unusual that you haven’t seen him in three days.

After dithering, you string your bow and pick up a quiver, and go to search the ruins. You don’t have them all mapped out, and you know there are still some dangerous areas where the floors are liable to collapse, or the ceilings to cave in. It would be a shame if all your internal conflict on whether or not to let Karkat live was wasted by him falling prey to architecture.

It takes you two hours to find him. He’s sequestered himself in the furthest corner of the ruins, where the air is thick and hot, and you find yourself knocking on the heavy wooden door before thinking about whether or not you should leave Karkat to his peace. He has never trespassed in your workshop uninvited, and you have done the same for him thus far.

He yanks open the door. You have enough time to notice - his thighs are _drenched_ in red and he is completely naked, his eyes glassy and the rest of him covered in a thin sheen of sweat, then he grabs your hair and yanks you down, and-

-and it is the first time you have been kissed in a long time, and to be perfectly frank he is doing an awful job of it. The oddness of the situation snaps you out of the stupor you are in. Your hands on his shoulders burn, and you gently push him away and down from you, holding him at arm’s length.

“Karkat,” you say, and he shudders. You don’t have it in you to be angry, or stern, not with him looking so vulnerable in front of you and the sick suspicion that you are somehow betraying a trust just by seeing him like this. “Karkat,” you try again, “I don’t understand.”

“Understatement of the fucking century,” Karkat says, and makes a valiant effort to find your belt. You firmly redirect his hands and he whines. “Just fucking _fuck_ me, I know you want to, maybe you can finally fuck me _dead_ -”

Your fingers tighten around his shoulders and you hold him more firmly away from you, because you _do_ want to. There is a hot pressure deep in your gut that you haven’t felt since you were exiled. You had figured that the lack of need to contribute slurry to the drones had made your desire extraneous as well, and in the end, you have been content on your own. Perhaps you have become sickeningly fond of Karkat, but it has strictly been a matter of valuing his company.

He breaks into a sob and rolls his hips at the feel of your hands digging into him, and you have to bite your lip sharply to retain focus. “-it’s fucking, fucking _pheromones_ , I’m fucking _broken_ so you might as well use me, you fix things, that’s what you’re good at-”

Your heart shatters into pieces. You have to lick your lips before you can speak, and Karkat’s eyes hungrily following the motion doesn’t help, but eventually you manage to say, “No.”

“ _Please_ ,” he begs, leaning into your hands. “Help me.” His lips are swollen and for all that you resolutely refuse to look down, the smell of him is strong in the air, and you have never wanted something so badly. But Karkat is not on offer. If you understand him, he can’t be in enough control of himself to give permission, his body actively eroding his will as it is yours.

You still cannot pull away from him. This stalemate will come to a head in one way or another, but you refuse to let it take the first companion you have had in far too long from you, and if you send him away to spare your dignity then you are reasonably certain a worse fate will befall him, with people who are far too likely to let him lend himself broken.

“I apologise,” you say, and scoop him up. He moans helplessly when your arm makes contact with his legs, then huddles against your chest. It’s a few short steps to the nearest room with a pool large enough to bathe in, and Karkat squawks when you dump him in.

“I-” you say, and then swallow. “I hope that we can talk. Later.” Karkat has already given up on you as a lost cause and has resorted to his hand, so you move to take a step away. Before you can, his other hand locks around your wrist and holds you fast, and you don’t think you have the self-control left to peel his fingers away and not break them.

“Don’t leave,” he says, the clearest thing he’s said all night. “You don’t have to. to. Just don’t leave.”

You cannot kill him, and you cannot leave him. So you settle in to wait out the longest, strangest hours of your life, and wonder how exactly this happened.

\--

He falls asleep, some time later, and you are reminded of nothing so much as the first time you saw him, exhausted beyond all reason. It stirs you into motion, when you were afraid to move lest you lost control while he was awake. Finding his clothes would be a useless endeavour, and he’s still in the cold water of the bathing pool, so he’s mostly clean. Finally you settle for dampening a washcloth and wiping the sweat from his face.

It may be abasement for your guilt, or a simple desire to care for him, or both. You do it anyway, and then carefully comb your fingers through his hair. Laid out like this, he is too skinny and flushed, small and vulnerable and your responsibility.

He looks disturbingly like his Ancestor, and yet nothing at all alike.

“I killed your Ancestor,” you tell his sleeping form, your hands not once straying from his hair. “He was compassionate and brave, and I executed him for the sake of the Empire.” The gentle tug of his hair is so soothing it almost makes you forget how wrong what you’re doing is. Perhaps one day you will tell him the whole truth and let him make his choice as to whether to stay or leave then. It seems that he has had a paucity of choice in his life, and deserves better. “And I don’t know whether I’m keeping you from his legacy because I fear it or because I fear for you.”

You have never been particularly good at being honest with yourself, but you can manage for others, sometimes.

Karkat opens an eye. “I’m awake, you know.”

You freeze miserably in place.

He yawns, wide enough to crack his jaw, and stretches. “You didn’t fuck me.”

“I-” you say, and here you would scramble for an excuse, if you could find any.

“I’m lucid now.” His eyes slide away from you, and you think he might be a resigned sort of embarrassed. “For a while. If your noble guilt trip can stand it, next time it’d be nice if you deigned to lend a hand instead of letting me writhe around in pain.”

“No,” you say again, firmly, without thinking about it. “Not when you are so far gone that you cannot say yes - what kind of person do you think I _am_?”

He reaches up, and you realise that, for whatever he says, his guard is still down, and that is an unnatural state for Karkat Vantas. Still, you let him take your face in his hands, because refusing anything you can give him would be a misery. “You’re the first person who managed to say no to _me_. So fuck you for thinking that you can guilt-trip and inner-pain your way out of this, I am not done enough to deal with fucking plot twists right now.”

You press your hands against the beds of his horns, as far as you are willing to go before anything is talked out at length, and almost get hooked on his quiet sigh. “Later,” you promise, although you’re not sure to whom.

\--

Karkat is skittish and you are elusive, and the two of you are hesitant to codify anything you are. You want to give him the options that his condition precludes, and he- well, you’re not sure what he wants of you, other than safety and a place, but if he ever asks anything more you doubt you will be able to refuse him.

You suppose you want to give him the chance his Ancestor never had, and that is enough for you, for now.


End file.
